Chapter 26: Pushing Forward

Chapter 26: Pushing Forward

Chapter 26

At dinner time, Kai brought out everything he had left of Doras rations to share with his family. Laughing at their faces as they tried the exotic food.

They enjoyed it so much, he had to promise he would bring more home next time. Who knew what they would say if they tried a freshly cooked meal instead of days-old rations?

I could ask Dora to prepare something when Mom next comes to the estate to make a commission for Virya.

He realized too late that now Kea was even more convinced he had spent a year lazing around and enjoying life.

Indeed, a good action never goes unpunished. Im sure if I tell her the truth, she wont believe me. If I show her my skills and race as proof, she will have an existential crisis for being bested by her younger sibling.

Being a good brother was exhausting.

* * *

The next day passed quickly as Kai made his room livable with the help of his mother.

After clearing and cleaning up, it didnt look half bad. It wasnt very spacious, but he managed to fit everything he needed.

On one side of the bed, there was a small cabinet with all his possessions. The other was occupied by a desk where he set up a small alchemy station in a corner. While the last corner had a small bookshelf and a big trunk housing all the contents of the boxes that originally occupied his room.

They had contained his fathers possessions. With the help of his mother, he went through everything Rellan left them to make an inventory.

Alana had offered to move them to her room, but he refused. He liked having them around. They spent a whole afternoon organizing everything so they would occupy the least amount of space.

When they moved from Whiteshore, Rellan had paid some people to help them carry all his valuable objects and books. Later they had been forced to sell many of his possessions for cheap during the famine. All the good clothes he bought from the mainland and the shiny stuff, like a letter opener made of silver and a couple decorative paperweights.Ñøv€l-B1n was the first platform to present this chapter.

The only valuable object they kept, besides the books, was his enchanted pen. It was like the one Dora gave him that could write without ink and never run dry, but the two couldnt look more different.

The one he got at the estate looked not roughly made, but it was clear the only aim was for it to be functional. Rellans was crafted with a different purpose, thinking as much of its beauty as of practical use.

It was all shiny, made of a silvery material that wasnt silver. Delicate interlocking runes ran across its sides; an artistic choice that added to its mystic. It would fetch a nice price, maybe a few silver mesars, if not even a gold one.

Rellan had been planning to pawn it off, but after the accident, there was no shot they would sell it.

Apart from that, they still had most of his old books and research notes. They were the thing his dad cared the most about, but in Greenside no one would recognize their value or be interested in buying them anyway.

They had only sold a couple of collection books to the previous mayor. He didnt have any interest in their content, but he thought they would look impressive sitting on his shelves. Making him look more cultured.

The mayor was the only possible buyer and knew they were desperate, forcing Rellan to sell them for a tenth of their value.

Kai wondered if that coward had taken them with him when he ran away or left them in his house. He wasnt sure what was better. For those volumes to be in the hand of a slimy individual or burned away with his villa.

There was also the chance the mob might have looted them and they laid forgotten in some storage closet somewhere in Greenside. But Kai doubted people during the famine would have recognized their value or cared for something they couldnt sell or eat.

Kai pushed the gloomy thought out of his mind. He had to remind himself letting go didnt mean forgetting or that he didnt care.

Pushing forward and hard work were the only things that would help him make sure nothing like that happened again.

Admiring the neatly piled old tomes, charts and journals, Kai smiled. He had read a couple of them to pass the time before going to the estate. Now he wanted to go through everything and use them to train his Reading skill.

He also had to start practicing Elijahs exercises and study the books Dora gave him.

Kai sighed.

Running (lv69>73)Swimming (lv67>71)Meditation (lv58>60)Awareness (lv47>51)Herbology (lv41>44)Acting (lv31>36)Keen Eye (lv1>17)Processing Plants (lv1>14)Reading (lv1>10)Gardening (1>10)Mana Sense(lv36>38)Mana Manipulation (lv1>4)Alchemy (lv2>3)

His advancement had also made him realize another important fact he hadn't considered. While he doubled his number of skills, he had not doubled the hours in the day. He was still only one person with so much time in a day.

Twice the skills didnt mean twice the XP gains. He could focus only on so many skills at a time. Overall, it was a big net positive, but not the literal doubling he thought. The more his skill slots increased, the more this would become true. Each time it would have a smaller effect on XP gains.

Still, that was a bit like complaining he had too much money. Kai was very happy with his breakthrough.

Keen Eye and Processing Plants in particular flew through the first levels. The reason being he had been practicing them long before he obtained the slots to take the skills.

It was a bit like when he borrowed the experience of his previous life for the first levels of Meditation and Swimming. If he were to train with a spear for one more year and later take the Spear skill, he would also jump through the first levels.

While you could get proficient at something without a skill, there was a good reason people gave them so much importance. Continuing the same example, if he were to take the Spear skill first and then train for a year, he would see many times the progress he would have made otherwise.

In addition, while you could lose part of your ability with a spear if you didnt touch one for ten years, that didnt happen if you possessed a skill. Your progress was forever retained in the skill. You couldnt lose it or get rusty.

That was the theory at least, butas Virya taught himreality was complicated. The skill level was like your raw power or potential, how far you could push your ability.

You also needed to know how to apply that raw power to get the maximum result possible. You might be potentially able to do something, but never think of using your skill that way.

It was like vertical versus horizontal progression or mastery. A vastly higher skill level would always win. However, if the difference wasnt large, a slightly bigger number didnt count as much as your mastery of a skill.

To return to the spear example. On one side you had a hermit who trained with the spear alone in a cave. Never putting his skill to use against anyone else. On the opposite side, a veteran warrior who trained the skill on the battlefield and risked his life many times.

Lets then assume the two had the same skill level and attributes. They meet and decide to fight.

While technically they should be able to accomplish the same things, in practice the veteran warrior would win every time. The hermit had the same skill level and potential with a spear, but he didnt know how to make use of it properly.

That knowledge could only be gained through clever training and application of your skills. It was also an expertise you could lose if you did not practice it.

At least, that was how Kai understood things. It was amusing to think this was the very first lesson Virya gave him when he went to the estate. At the time he had not really understood what she meant. Only now, a year later, he felt he finally did.

While you might be tempted to simply find the fastest way to train a skill and repeat that thousands of times. It was important to find new ways to use your skills in different situations. Only then you could master a skill and be able to use 100% of its potential.

As Kai walked back home, he wondered if he should talk about this with his family. He was pretty sure it wasnt common knowledge in the archipelago.

The concept of skill mastery seemed obvious after you understood it, but it was a nuanced subject. If you didnt consider it important, it wouldnt take long for it to be forgotten.

Observing the people in the streets of Greenside, he wondered why this information wasn't taught from childhood. He knew he had a skewed view after spending a year training and being taught to accept nothing but the utmost best from himself.

Most people didnt seem very interested in improving their skills. He could understand how a farmer didnt care to optimize his tilling time, but only that he earned enough to feed his family. But didnt that farmer have other hobbies?

It felt like most adults had a strange apathy towards the Guide that he didn't understand. How could people have a super convenient way to check their progress and help them improve, and not use it and strive for more?

He didnt expect everyone to have the ambition to become the best in the world, but to him it seemed that most people had no ambition at all. They wasted such a wonderful gift for no apparent reason.

The citizens of Greenside went about their day looking bored and in no hurry to improve their lives. Maybe he was missing something.

Spending a year at the estate might have changed my views, but I dont get it. Ill have to ask Virya when I go back.

He could also ask his mother, but she would say he was being too judgemental and judge him a snobby brat in turn.

Kai didnt want to become someone who believed himself better than everybody else. He always joked and thought a bit that way, but that was mostly an attempt to preserve his own fragile ego.

He never truly believed he was better. He was confused about how someone with a clear path of improvement in front of them would not make use of it.

Im not an arrogant brat, I swear. I just think I'm better than most people. Thats all. Kai joked with himself.